Wednesday, March 23, 2011

We did a quick trip to one of Hua Hin’s tourist destinations, the Wat Huay Mongkol Temple. This temple is a sacred sanctuary to one of Thailand’s prestigious & miracle making monks named Luang Pu Thuat . It was home to the monks who were great witness of his miracles. The temple houses the largest granite statue of Luang Pu Thuat in Thailand. The gigantic figure is reachable by mounting a fleet of stairs.

Souvenir shop at the temple

At the entrance of the temple

One of the magnificent statue at the temple

Tourist & devotees offered flowers & candles

Another temple inside the temple

The gigantic granite statue of Luang Pu Thuat

Quick attempt to reach the top

Beside the giant statue are the two wooden elephants. They are sitting at the foundation of the stairwell that stretched to the statue. We have also seen giant Buddha head inside the temple.

One of the wooden giant elephant statues

Another giant elephant statue on the other side

The giant Buddha head

After spending 30 minutes in the temple, we went straight to the Elephant Village. Excited to see live elephants for the first time, we were almost disappointed since the said village was about to close that time (it’s 25 minutes before six pm). Good thing that the caretaker agreed to our request to have elephant ride even for 15 minutes only which still costs 300 Baht. Then off we went up to the giant platform so that we can hop in to the elephant’s back. It was such a great experience. We just have to extra careful because there were no safety seat-belts at the top of the elephant while we were also busy taking pictures & videos.

Entrance of Elephant Village

To the platform

Elephant ride to the village terrain

Our exciting ride on the 8-year old elephants

Going to the elephant trail

Extra careful in taking photos

One of the major routes on the elephant ride is when we crossed a swamp. At least the elephant were nice and never had tantrums during that moment otherwise we will be dumped into the swamp and will go back to our hotel wet & messy.